Singapore Chinatown At Night Captured on a Smartphone | Fotowalk

by January 27, 2017

Singapore is a haven for photographers of all ages. You can see a lot of post-card-worthy and Instagrammable places and landscapes. The diversity in architecture comes from a range of influences from different places, periods and races. One particular culture that is easily recognizable is the Chinese ethnicity, the largest ethnic group in the country. To get a glimpse of its heritage, the place to be is Singapore Chinatown.

The historic Chinatown gets even more lively and colorful towards the Chinese New Year. So I decided to do a photowalk since it is my first time in Chinatown and it will be the first episode of my Fotowalk Series. I did some long exposure shots using an amazing smartphone which I will talk about at the end of this post.

The following photos are unedited jpegs (no post-processing) from a smartphone camera except for adding watermark and resizing to 1000×750 pixels (30% from its original size) through a mobile app Pixlr.

Fotowalk Series I: Singapore Chinatown

Chinatown is located in the Central Area of Singapore within the Outram district. The easiest way is to take the MRT to Chinatown station (Northeast line) and when you take Exit A, this is what you see. Voila!

Using the Night Shot mode, you get more details from the buildings’ architecture while achieving a motion blur effect for the people passing by.

To welcome the Year of the Rooster, they have installed 5,500 handcrafted lanterns along with a 13m-tall rooster with outspread wings. It is located at the crossroads of Upper Cross St between Eu Tong Sen St and New Bridge Rd.

When in Chinatown, you won’t go hungry and you should not miss trying out different seafood and Chinese cuisine. Along Smith Street is the Chinatown Food Street, a row of hawker stalls, kiosks and shophouse restaurants with a variety of dishes to try.

(Auto mode. ISO: 200, F: 2.2, S: 1/33 seconds)

(Night Shot mode. ISO: 100, F: 2.2, S: 0.88 seconds)

By the way, you can access free Wi-fi around Chinatown so you always stay connected. At the end of this food street is the South Bridge Road where you can see some street lights and lantern decorations. One corner away and you will find a marvelous temple and museum.

(Night Shot mode. ISO: 100, F: 2.2, S: 4.49 seconds)

Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum

Perhaps one of the best architectural sights I have seen in Singapore Chinatown is the Buddha Tooth Relic Temple and Museum. Unfortunately it was already closed when I passed by so I’ll save it for another Fotowalk episode soon. But the exterior design itself is a thing of beauty.

Night Shots by Huawei P9

Talking about night photography on a smartphone, majority of the time you would get blurry, noisy and crappy photos by default. But when I discovered the magic brought by Huawei P9 smartphone, I was blown by it.

The Night Shot mode is an incredible feature for long exposure photography that is best with a tripod. Gone are the days of getting out of focused shots from DSLRs. You don’t have to worry about underexposed/overexposed shots. You just need to put it on a tripod, frame your shot and click the shutter. Simple as 1,2,3! 🙂

(Light Painting mode. ISO: 64, F: 2.2, S: 14.25 seconds)

Another awesome feature is the Light Painting mode which allows you to capture tail lights in very long exposures. But this feature I will cover later on a separate post so please watch out for it. But seriously, the photo above is fantastic! TBH! 😀

Again, I’d like to iterate that the shots above are unedited. From here you can put a little brightness, contrast and saturation then it would result to a very stunning image. With the amount of details this amazing lens can see in the dark, you have the flexibility to enhance and manipulate your photograph with DSLR quality. Thanks to Leica.

I hope the photos speak for itself cause I don’t want this to be a lengthy post about Singapore Chinatown and Huawei P9. For any questions, please leave a comment below. How do you find this smartphone for photography? And don’t forget to follow me on Facebook and Instagram to stay tuned for more Fotowalks to come! 🙂

This isn’t a comprehensive review of the smartphone, please refer to Huawei P9 reviews for more specification details. This isn’t a sponsored post so all opinions expressed are mine. Hoping to do one in the future though so please spread the good vibes! 🙂